Dec. 30, 2012
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Chuck Pagano speaks during a news conference / Darron Cummings, AP

by Bob Kravitz, USA TODAY Sports

by Bob Kravitz, USA TODAY Sports

INDIANAPOLIS -- Chuck Pagano began to feel the fatigue during training camp, but, then, fatigue comes with the job as head coach of the NFL's Indianapolis Colts. There are two-a-days in the searing central Indiana heat. There are meetings. There are long hours. Part of the job, he figured.

The bruises, though, he couldn't explain.

They, too, began in training camp and got progressively worse early in the season.

"Deep, dark purple," Pagano said Thursday during an expansive 60-minute interview in his office. "I had no idea where they came from. I didn't bump into anything. But like every other hard-headed guy, every coach, I thought, 'It's just a bruise, keep going.' So I didn't do anything about it."

Finally, he showed his wife, Tina.

"How'd you get those bruises?" she would ask.

"I have no idea," he would answer.

"You better get that checked," she told him.

So the morning of the Sunday, Sept. 23 game against the Jacksonville Jaguars, Pagano met the Colts team doctors.

"How long have you had those bruises?" they asked.

"A long time," Pagano told them.

Two days later, a nurse was brought to the complex to draw his blood. Tuesday night, he got a call.

"We found something," he was told. "Some of your counts were really low, and they shouldn't be low."

So they set up an appointment, at which point it hit Pagano that this wasn't anemia or the common cold.

"They told me who this doctor was (Larry Cripe) and where I had to go (the Indiana University Simon Cancer Center), and I was like this," Pagano said, bending over in his chair, putting his head in his hands. "I'm like, 'You got to be kidding me.' "

At this point, Pagano had not told his wife about the findings.

So he returned to the last Wednesday practice before the bye week. The team doctor met with him.

He was told that wasn't an option. "No, you need a ride," Pagano was told. "Can your wife take you? You've got to tell her."

Pagano remembered thinking the worst. "Something's up," he thought.

He then met with Cripe on that Wednesday -- Sept. 26 -- a date indelibly etched in Pagano's memory. Cripe shot straight, told Pagano that, based on the numbers, he was 99% sure he had a treatable form of leukemia. First, though, they would draw more blood and do a bone marrow biopsy to confirm the initial findings. All Pagano had to hear was 99%.

"All of a sudden, it's like getting hit across the head with a baseball bat," he said. "At that point, you have a pretty good idea. But you're still thinking, 'No way, this ain't happening.' There was denial.

"Then you're saying, 'Why? Why would we end up here? I just got this opportunity of a lifetime. I just get this chance, and now I'm going to get slapped with this and be removed from what I love to do the most?' "

There was stunned silence and then shared tears from Pagano and his wife.

The questions of "how'' and "why'' lingered in that hospital room. But not for long. Pagano is a football coach. What does he tell his team when it's down 21-3 at halftime? He tells the players how they're going to push through and win this game.

"Then reality set in. I know what I've got; what's this going to entail? What's the game plan and how long?" Pagano asked Cripe. "Give me some numbers and don't BS me. And Dr. Cripe was great about that; he was totally straightforward. He told me it was one of the most curable forms and what I'd have to do to beat it and what the timetable was going to be. `Now this is what you're going to have to go through, and it ain't gonna be very fun.' "

Pagano was given time to make one phone call before he was rushed into treatment. He called general manager Ryan Grigson -- "He was floored," Pagano remembered -- and they talked about how they were going to move forward.

His wife made the toughest calls, calling the children, calling Pagano's parents in Boulder, Colo.

"I'm not sure I could have gotten through those phone calls," he said. "Thank God for Tina."

An hour after learning of the diagnosis, he was on a gurney with a pick line, surrounded by several IV bags filled with fluids and medicines.

Pagano knows something about the fragility of human life. He lost a sister in a car accident when she was 22. Now here he was, face to face with his own mortality for the first time.

And yet he never thought about death. Not once. Not for a second.

"After Dr. Cripe told me the percentages, it never entered my mind that I wouldn't beat it," Pagano said. "I never once thought, 'This is it.'

"Because of my wife and kids and grandkids, I just thought, 'No way, I have no options. I will beat this.' We say we can, we will, we must, by any means necessary, we have no choice. That's what I say going into games. That's how it was for me. These people (his family), I've got to be there to care for them. So I never had a choice."

THE JOURNEY

The first week of chemotherapy isn't terribly bad. But then it becomes an unrelenting hell that makes a patient sick, wreaks havoc with the immune system, saps every ounce of energy. For a time, early in the process, Pagano had fluid in his lungs and needed oxygen.

"From the mental standpoint, I could deal with it because I've been hardened from having been an athlete and a football coach," Pagano said. "But the physical part? It was hard dealing with the daily grind of feeling like (bleep). It was like Groundhog Day."

It became a vicious cycle. They would give him medicine to handle a side effect of chemo. Then they would give him another medication to deal with the side effects of the initial medication. And another medication to deal with those side effects.

Meanwhile, Pagano looked at a greaseboard set up on the door to the restroom, a calendar with a counter. Starting Sept. 27, he would check his white cell count, his hemoglobin and platelets. Every day, hoping and praying they would move in the right direction.

"I completely lost my appetite; my taste buds were gone, and I didn't want to eat," he said. "When you get chemo, some people get a lot of sores in their mouth and even their esophagus, so they chew on ice; thank God that didn't happen with me. ...

"My wife -- she'd be sleeping on this little couch. She'd ask, 'How ya feeling?' and I'd say, 'I've got nothing today. Nothing.' Some days I could get up and take a sponge bath, and other days it took all I had to go to the restroom or brush my teeth. There were days -- and I don't even recall them all -- where I slept 20 straight hours. Doing simple things. Things we take for granted became a chore.

"Then this oral medication they gave me started giving me migraines," Pagano said. "Then they give you these pain meds, so you're all doped up you can't go to the restroom and they start giving you something else to help you go to the restroom. There's some aches and joint pain. And the night sweats, fevers. I'd wake up in the middle of the night absolutely soaked. Then get up, get the chills, put on new clothes, and (in) two hours have to do it all over again."

But he pushed through it, just as millions of cancer patients push through every day. Again, he had no choice but to be strong. ChuckStrong in this case.

As much as the Colts derived strength from Pagano, he drew as much strength, if not more, from them.

They gave him a laptop and a monitor.

He always had practice tapes.

He always had game tapes.

When he could have visitors, players and coaches would come over. When they couldn't, there was a constant flurry of texts and e-mails and letters. Interim coach Bruce Arians, in particular, constantly kept Pagano in the loop.

"With everything they sent, and then with what the team was doing on the field, I'm thinking, 'I'll be damned if I'm not going to walk out of this son of a gun and be where I'm supposed to be,' " Pagano said.

"Those practice tapes were the best thing for me. I wanted to stay as close to this as I possibly could. The team did a great job keeping me engaged. When I was working on football, it took me away from what was going on. It put me in a different place. It helped me forget for a few hours."

Watching games, even the victories, became another small slice of torture.

"I felt powerless, like I had my hands handcuffed behind my back," he said. "I'd try to text people at the game, and a lot of times they didn't have cell reception at the stadium so they couldn't get back to me. Thank God for Ryan. Every time I'd text him, he'd text me back, keep me up to date if a guy was hurt or something else was going on."

Football helped, and football fans, people who didn't know Pagano all that well through just three games, kept his spirits high.

They sent him e-mails, quilts, texts, letters, books. As he sat in his hospital bed, especially on those bad days, his wife would read the correspondence to him. She would then send back notes to the well-wishers, something the Paganos have continued to do and will continue to do until every last one is answered.

"It might take a long time, but we'll get to all of them," Pagano said. "It was so humbling, the support we got. I can't tell you how much that meant to us. Such incredible gestures from people.

"I remember this picture of a little girl, her name's Ellie, she's 2 years old. She's got a bald head, she's wearing an Easter dress, standing next to her brother with a story of who she is, when she got diagnosed, how she's progressing.

"I heard about babies who are going through this. I heard about this 45-year-old single mom, got a picture of her and her son at his med school graduation. She was undergoing chemo for leukemia, she was so sick, but she was bound and determined to make it to that ceremony. And she did.

"One story after another.

"I talked at the press conference (Monday) about that little guy, the 9-year-old, Ryan Darby, who gave me a pep talk and told me to chew on strawberry Popsicles if the sores get too bad. I still correspond with him."

The other day, Pagano's assistant came into the office with a picture of a little girl named Jessica. Her mother had asked if Pagano would autograph a picture and write a note.

"She was diagnosed Christmas Day," he said. He paused. Tears rolled down his eyes. He apologized for the emotion, as if an apology was somehow necessary.

"Lord, why? You know, if you're a parent, if your child has to go through this, damn, you just want to flip it and, as a parent, go through it yourself. 'Let me go through this friggin' thing, not some small child who's got her whole life in front of her.' I'm sitting there thinking, 'Hell, writing a note and autographing a picture is the absolute least I could do. What else can I do?' ...

"I look at Jessica, or see the smiles on those kids' faces, and I'm thinking, 'C'mon, you're ever going to bitch about anything in your life?' It's like I tell my players, 'Don't take one day for granted.' You walk in this building, go to your locker, see your name, see you've still got a jersey, you better do everything in your power not to jeopardize it. Because there are people out there who are going through things you'll never understand. We have to know that nothing is promised, nothing is guaranteed, especially tomorrow."

His Catholic faith also got him through. A religious book sits on the desk in his office.

"Most of the cards and support I received were based on faith," Pagano said. "I've always been a religious person. What I did really was pray a lot. I just asked, when I woke up and when I went to bed, 'Please heal me.' I just kept asking and asking. And then when I started feeling a little better, I just started thanking Him. It helped me tremendously from a mental standpoint.

"And by the grace of God, I sit here, back on the date we targeted. I never questioned Him or asked why. I just asked for strength and courage."

THE AFTERMATH

It is a Thursday afternoon, one day after Pagano's first full practice day. And he's feeling good, not 100%, but mighty close. He is trying to stick to the Cripe script, keeps his hours manageable and continues to take his medication, doing everything possible to stay healthy and keep the cancer in remission.

There's still a long road ahead, five years of keeping the disease at bay. But he's already traveled the roughest part.

"I wondered how I'd feel (Thursday) after a full day Wednesday," he said. "Each day's gotten better and better. I feel lucky. Man, I'm so lucky. Blessed. That's how I feel."

Now he wants to share his blessings.

First, with his family, with his wife and kids and grandkids. With his football team, which is heading into the playoffs. And with the community, specifically that portion of the community dealing with cancer.

Over time, he wants to be a spokesperson, a lending hand, a voice of support against a disease that touches so many millions of lives.

When he was first diagnosed, he asked, "Why?"

Well, now he knows.

"The 'why' got clearer and clearer as I went through it," he said. "I have a higher purpose now. How many can we help? That's the bottom line. Along with everything else we've got to do as a husband, a father and a coach, I feel now like I've been blessed with a platform. Now part of my responsibility is to give back to people who are going through this.

"The biggest thing is, 'OK, He's blessed me with this (remission), now how can I be a blessing to somebody else? How many can we help?"

As Pagano speaks, the Colts' media relations director, Avis Roper, knocks on the door. "Coach, you've got radio at 4:45," he said.

Pagano smiled.

There is always something to do. There's a big game Sunday against the Houston Texans. There's advance preparation for the first playoff game, likely against Pagano's former team, the Baltimore Ravens. There are notes to send out. There are final touches he wants to put on a public letter to the community.

"When you have things taken away, you promise you'll never take anything for granted ever again," he said, standing up from his chair. "I've been blessed."